


And We Are Built From Bones

by WillOTheWhisk



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aimless, Alternate Ending, Angst, Character Study, First Campaign, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot Collection, Spoilers, end of campaign one, vox machina - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillOTheWhisk/pseuds/WillOTheWhisk
Summary: In which Orthax never quite went away, and when it came down to it, Percy didn’t quite mind.In which the Raven Queen never took Vax away, and he minded that quite a bit."What if ending was...MORE SAD?" Look I love my children but I also love to make them suffer.





	1. Vax

**Author's Note:**

> Right so the summary mentions Percy, but Vax comes first, and if I can wrangle what I wrote about Percy into something that's actually good, then there will be another chapter, but it probably won't be for a while.

Vax walked the empty streets of Whitestone, clinging to the shadows, shivering slightly from the cold. His boots were soaked from snow, his fingers too stiff now to actually hold a dagger, but he’d stay out a minute longer before heading back to the castle.

He did this a lot these days, wandered the places where they had won battles, when they were empty, and tried to find his way around their meaning. He had paced the still fire-scarred streets of Imon, climbed again through the titan in Vasselheim, right to the top, and watched over the city from too high to see it’s people moving around. He had returned to as many of the places where they had lost people as he could, even the ones who came back.

He still didn’t know what he was looking for.

“I was supposed to die, y’know?” He whispered to the empty air. It was true, The Matron of Ravens was meant to take him. But he couldn’t even feel her anymore. After they had killed Vecna, they had waited, not daring to hope, for days. And that turned into weeks, and he went to her temple, because spending a lifetime waiting was going to kill him, was going to kill everyone who loved him. She didn’t say a word. He plunged into the blood and emerged seconds later clawing at his throat, dragged himself from the pool, and knelt, gagging and retching onto the floor.

Weeks became months, and he was left without spells, without wings, and without an answer. 

When it had seemed he was going to go, there had never been enough time. There was everything to say and no words that were enough to say it with, and everything was desperate, clinging onto last moments, last words. Now, there was nothing left to say at all. There was no moment of relief, where they all knew it was going to be okay, no “Oh Vax, you’re safe!” no release of tension, sobbing reunion after a successful raise dead spell. There was the slow realization that maybe he would be sticking around. But still, to go back to normal seemed impossible. 

It was the bane of being a hero, he supposed. Nothing ever went back to normal. There was no ‘done’. They didn’t get to pack up and go home, ‘Show’s over, everyone out’. They waited for the next disaster. They tried to prepare for an unknown impact.

He couldn’t look Keyleth in the eye anymore. He hadn’t heard a word Vex had spoken to him in months. He had spent weeks preparing to die, had already said his goodbyes, and there had been so much to say, and all that he had wanted was just a little more time. Well, he got it. More time than he knew what to do with.

The chill set into his bones, cold fingers down his spine and tingles through the back of his skull, and he vaguely wondered if he would become ill in the next few days. Pike would fix him up, scold him for not staying warm, and that would be fine, but then she might start to worry. He had been avoiding Pike too, knew what he would see in her eyes, could hear the exact tones that would thread through her voice when she spoke. Pike would worry, and he didn’t want that.

His feet had taken him to the end of a street, he stood now in front of a snowbank, dark houses on either side of him. He stood, for just a minute, and his teeth began to chatter. He willed them to stop, and turned around, began his silent walk back to the castle.


	2. Percy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good! Enough!  
> Okay so I totally forgot I had posted the first part of this, oops.

     Percy had been ready to fight for Vax’s soul. Not just because he wanted Vax to stay, not entirely. It had more been to prove a point. What that point was, he wasn’t quite sure.

     He had told Vex he wanted to be a clockmaker, that he was done with revenge. But he still felt anger tinging his thoughts and actions, felt the black smoke clawing at the edges of his consciousness. They had taken every precaution against Orthax, cast greater restoration on him and his guns, and he should have been gone. But these things did not let go easily, and when he had died, in the hours that had felt like years, Orthax had dug his way back in, ripping and tearing, and he had built himself a back door, a way in. And the smoke found its way back. The smoke seeped in through the burn scars on his hands and the bullet scars in his chest, and coiled in the back of his skull and the lining of his lungs.

     I’ll show you broken, he had wanted to tell the Raven Queen, I’ll show you what I can be. And then she never came. And he was so angry.

     With the anger, he felt alive.

     Dark, sure, a little unstable, definitely. But without Orthax he had been a machine with missing parts, couldn’t run. Everything he tried to create was missing that shininess, that satisfaction. He had tinkered, and made piles of junk, devices that worked, but didn’t fit. And now he was back, a little more every day, and everything that Percy made was brilliant, inspired, made of smoke and fire, buzzing with heat and life.

     He didn’t show any of it to Vex. He worked, slowly, on clocks and useless pretty things, to keep her from worrying. She still worried, she was smart, but he didn’t think she ever suspected that the demon was back, whispering in his ear, digging claws into the back of his neck, stalking through his dreams. She thought it was a creative block maybe, or a need to distance himself from what he had done while the world was falling apart.

     The world never really stopped falling apart, for Percy. He sat alone in his workshop and made his weapons wreathed in smoke, and the world around him crumbled. The dragons would be back and he would need to protect his home, The Whispered One would return despite their best efforts, Delilah and Sylas Briarwood had returned before, they could do it again, and if they could do it, Ripley might. New horrors would arise, some unimaginable monster would break through the from the Plane of Water, a new villain would become a god, a long slumbering beast in the depths of the earth would awaken. Orthax showed him these things in his dreams, Percy woke unable to move, panic clouding his thoughts, cold sweat coating his body, and knew that he wasn’t done, that he had more to make. He would never be unprepared for the dangers that came again, would never lose more family.


End file.
